


Whip Smart

by RosesToPaint



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, BAMF Stiles, Corruption, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, World Domination, anti-hero derek, stiles is the only one with a working brain, super politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosesToPaint/pseuds/RosesToPaint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world of superheroes Stiles is...nothing special. As a university student in a dead end job the rest of his life stretches out in front of him with no end in sight. Up until now. Where there are superheroes, there are also supervillains, and for some reason this one seems to have fixated on him. superhero AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heat wave

 

This is an experiment. Right now my priority is my Naruto fic, but I recently found this on my usb drive again and I still like it. I'll keep writing on it a little, let's see where it goes.

 

* * *

 

 

The air is hot and humid. It’s mid August and the city is suffering through the last heat wave of this summer. Probably the last. He hopes.

Summer was long this year. It started in late April and by now all of Stiles’ colleagues are about to throw in the towel and flee the country to somewhere with a beach or at least to the lake two towns over. Something passes right over his head, bringing a cool breeze.

Freeze comes to a perfect stop between the tables of the froyo shop, making the sunshades shake and a group of preteens swoon. He smiles charmingly, but everyone knows he’s here for a frozen yoghurt, too. Instead of the usual ice flowers prettily blooming under his every step he leaves a sluggish trail of water, and it would be kind of funny, if it weren’t so unsettling. According to the news heroes have been dropping out of the sky like dead flies in the heat.  
Right now only Dragon and Red Blaze are properly patrolling, but they aren’t going to last long. They may be immune to the heat, he thinks, licking the last bit of plain froyo from his spoon, but that won’t save them from simple exhaustion. The city is too big for just two heroes. The other towns aren’t fairing much better, but right now the crime rate has hit a new low anyway. Probably also because of the heat. He dumps the small pink cardboard tube into the trash and slowly, very slowly, ambles back into the shop. It’s childish but he feels completely justified to be dragging his feet like this. He’ll have to mop up the puddles of lukewarm water that Freeze is still dripping everywhere inside and mopping isn’t fun in this weather. Outside the water has already evaporated and he briefly amuses himself by imagining it turning into a cloud and raining down again, dying a lonely quick death in the unspeakable summer heat.

He snorts.

The sky is still clear and blue; it’s 3 p.m.

“So, my man – think you could make me another froyo?”

Freeze raises a smarmy eyebrow at him, wriggling his extra-extra-big, 0.25 litres, hot pink cardboard tube at him. He snatches it out of his hand. “That’ll be another 7 dollars.”

“Even for me...?”

“I’ll make you an offer”, he says, leaning over the counter, and Freeze smiles, sure of his victory. “I’ve got half a bucket of yoghurt in the fridge, if you can freeze it yourself you’ll get it for free.”

The smarmy smile drops and is replaced by annoyance. Stiles purses his lips, just as annoyed, thank you very much. “Listen buddy, our freezers gave up four hours ago, we’re currently running on sweat, tears and desperation. If you can’t pay, you can leave – just like everybody else.”

 

It’s 9 p.m., about half an hour after sundown. It’s incredibly loud outside, because most people just came crawling out of their hidey holes and there are barbeques all over town. The froyo shop closes up at 8 p.m. and it’s finally time to go home. Stiles resists the urge to let his head drop against the subway window – who knows what heads have already rubbed against the glass – and reminds himself of the pint of self made peach sorbet in the freezer and the last two chapters of his stupid, kitschy romance novel waiting on his bedside table. Tomorrow is his day off.

Happy thoughts carry him towards his small (kind of dirty, my god, he really has to tidy up real soon) apartment, take off his shoes and carry him the last two steps to bed. Belatedly he remembers the sorbet, but then decides it’s not worth getting up again. His eyelids drop and when he opens them again it’s 1 a.m. and it’s loud.

The acrid smell of smoke has somehow found its way into his bedroom and the sound of sirens seems incredibly close. For a confused, sleepy moment he thinks it might be his apartment on fire, but it’s not. The tired brunette drags the curtains back and is nearly blinded by the flames. It’s the apartment complex opposite and there are people standing on balconies, trying to get away from the heat and the smoke.

It’s not the first fire this year, of course. But it’s the first one he’s actually seen. In moments like this he can see why superheroes are so popular. The Dove is picking up civilians and drops them in the safety nets as if they weight nothing at all. Her gray cape catches fire a few times and in the end he rips it off and throws it into the crowd of onlookers, who catch it and immediately start fighting over it with the fervour of adoring fans.  
Somewhat wryly he thinks he just witnessed the moment that The Dove abandoned the idea of capes forever. It’s the third one that bit the dust, as far as he knows, which means there were probably a lot more that he doesn’t know about. He closes the curtain again. The excited whoop of the neighbours tells him there are already more heroes arriving and he has no interest in witnessing the excessive worship that is sure to follow. He won’t be getting any more sleep tonight, so he grabs a ratty t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants and goes for a run. He hopes that by the time he gets back the worst of the noise will have died down.

 

Stiles’ feet feel like lead, and really, he’s not surprised. After four hours of sleep he doesn’t actually feel like running, but he feels even less like lying down, listening to the fire, or watching TV, hearing about the fire, or generally anything else that can be done past midnight on a weekday. Chagrined, he gives up and drops down onto the next bench.

It’s 2 a.m.

He’s a 24-year-old working in a dead-end job in a froyo shop.

Tomorrow is his day off. It doesn’t feel like such a victory anymore.

The next thing he knows the sun wakes him. He must have fallen asleep outside – bad idea, really bad idea. The crick in his neck agrees violently, but he ignores it in favour of patting down his pockets. His keys are gone.

The goddamn keys are gone. He allows herself a frustrated scream. It echoes sharply and ineffectively in the empty park and it doesn’t make him feel any better. He’ll have to knock at the neighbours’ and call the locksmith from there. God, how was he going to eat this month? His father isn’t speaking to him, not since he dropped out of college, and he doesn’t have any close friends he’d dare to ask for money. _There should be a hero for **that**_ , he thinks bitterly. _Loan Man or Check Boy or something_.

He chokes back angry tears before stretching his legs, readying himself for the one hour run back home.

 

His whole day off is, of course, ruined. The locksmith is less than sympathetic. The tubby man in a blue uniform looks haggard, much like everyone else Stiles has crossed paths with during the last few weeks. Prices for water have gone up, which drives up other prices as well. He usually makes enough money to rent this little one room apartment in a fairly good part of the city and, if he safes a little, to buy himself small luxuries like the expensive blood oranges that went into the sorbet still in his freezer.  
But this month money is tight, because the utilities shot through the roof. He’d be able to scrape by, usually, but the locksmith tells him, with hard eyes and in no uncertain terms, that he’s only taking cash – and a lot of it. Stiles had hoped to give him a check, try to draw out the payment until next month, but now he has absolutely zero money left in his wallet, in addition to the zero dollars in his bank account. He’s been doing double shifts already and the prices for pretty much everything are still rising.

This means a second job.

 

The heat wave giveth and the heat wave taketh. While it certainly took the rest of Stiles’ free time and pretty much all of his money – like his last girlfriend, ha! – it also provided him with a job. Though that could also be attributed to ‘taketh’, just from other people.

                                                  

                                                   Assistant EMT

Due to the heat weave the Beacon Hills Hospital is looking for additional help in ambulance and emergency room. Duties will include:

-          initial medical assessment and aid

-          basics of patient care

-          distribution of water in populated areas

Workshop of 60 hours included. Volunteers please call XXX...

 

Hm. Maybe he could put those four semesters of medical school to use.

 

 


	2. Down with the sickness

Ok, so this was a bad idea.

Nobody ever said Stiles isn’t a hard worker, because he is. He made it through two years of med-school on sweat, blood and maybe a bit of brains, until he had a complete freak out, packed his bags in the middle of the night and left town in his rickety old truck never to return again. In hindsight, maybe, possibly, he doesn’t handle stress very well.

That doesn’t mean, that he can’t gather his skirts like a real woman and _work_. But this goes far beyond _work_.

The hospital is jam packed with mostly the elderly.

A stressed looking nurse introduces herself as Melissa McCall and tells them the workshop will have to wait for half of them, because they really can’t spare them for a single second longer. Other nurses are crowded around a small section of the waiting room, where a big make-shift sign at the wall reads ‘Emergencies’. They are all wearing bright red vests identifying them as ‘Medical personnel, please do not engage’.

The administration seems to be run mostly people in ugly, mustard coloured shirts – probably to cover up any potential ‘accidents’. One of them sweeps past their group; on his back it says ‘Volunteer, How can I help you?’.

Nurse McCall hands out 25 of those ugly vests, Stiles being one of the unlucky recipients, and the rest of them are led towards a backroom.

Looking to his left, where the biggest gaggle of volunteers is busy doling out water and wiping down sweaty people, Stiles thinks if the others are shot in that backroom, they might have gotten the better end of the deal. Nurse McCall claps her hands loudly. “Ok everyone! Follow me and listen closely, I can’t spare much time.”

While they wrestle with their new uniforms, she waves over two volunteers; a big black dude with arms like the Hulk and a tall, lanky guy with curly blonde hair. Both look anything but pleased.

“This are Vernon and Isaac. Vernon, you’ll take this half” – she gestures vaguely to five of them – “you’re going to stay here and take care of all the heat stroke victims. That means helping them drink, wiping them down and keeping them calm. Isaac, you’re taking the rest of them. Isaac will position you in strategic places all over the hospital, where you’ll assist the nurses. You don’t question them, you just **do**. They’ll instruct you in small, simple words, because we really can’t spare the time for any kind of explanation. Mostly you’ll be cleaning bed pans, bringing food and helping people around. Some of you will be in the ER, where you’ll have to deal with all kinds of bodily fluids. I need to know right now who is too squeamish about this, so that the doctors don’t have to end up looking after you if you faint.”

Only a young woman shakily raises her hand. Melissa slaps a red sticker on her uniform without comment.

“The ER is stressful, which is why you’ll rotate every three days. If you have problems with any of this, there’s the door. I don’t have time for your complaints.”

Stiles thinks this is slightly contra productive, but holds his tongue. It’s one of the few things his dad successfully taught him: ‘ _Son, if they pay you, you shut up and nod, even if it’s crap’_.

It’s how his dad survived 20 years in the police force without running amok among his superiors.

Apparently everyone else was taught similar things by their parents, because nobody makes any move towards said door. Melissa nods, satisfied, and stomps off without a word.

Isaac whisks them away into the depths of the hospital.

There are relieved sighs when he assigns ‘Nora’ to the podiatry. ‘Gus’ and ‘Liv’ seem pretty ok with the neurology department. ‘Garret’ is slightly less enthusiastic about OB/GYN, but he’ll live. When they pass the ER and only leave a desolate looking ‘Luis’ behind, Stiles breathes a sigh of relief. He is instead shoved into the arms of a goofy looking male nurse at the post-anaesthesia care unit. Awesome.

“Hey”, the man beams, “I’m Scott. It’s great you’re here! Work’s been piling up, I totally can’t even anymore.”

So Scott is a valley girl, Stiles can deal.

 

Ok, Scott is a pretty awesome valley girl. He doesn’t explain shit, but Stiles thinks that’s mostly because he keeps forgetting that his new colleague is not actually a proper nurse.

“Dude, can you get me the - ... thing. You know.”

He makes a nonsensical gesture in the general vicinity of Mrs. Lear’s drip.

It’s a good thing that Stiles has other relevant training, or he’d be pretty lost. It also helps, that he’s so proficient with foreign languages; four hours and he already speaks ‘Scott’ fluently. Which may, possibly, have to do with the fact, that the man is kind of obvious. Mrs. Lear seems to have less flattering thoughts about Scott, particularly his proficiency, but the fact that he’s currently the only nurse supervising this unit speaks for itself.

He doesn’t have to do much bed pan cleaning either, because there’s a constant influx and outflow here, and people rarely have the time to get their peepers open properly, not to mention their pee pees into pans.

The whole thing is still driving him batty, obviously, but that’s nobody’s fault but Stiles’ himself. The hospital has sent a familiar stressed twitch into his fingers, and he thanks god for Scott’s almost cross-eyed obliviousness to everything not directly related to his patients. He feels like a reverse junkie, already itching for his next fix of _everything-but-the-hospital-please-have-mercy._ He does know what he’s doing though, so at the end of his three days stay, he’s Scott’s sworn BHFF – Best Hospital Friend Forever – with a firm promise to come over with beer the second Scott can actually cash in his overdue vacation, without somebody directly **_dying_** for it.

He’s grateful, really, even if Scott’s a bit of a space cadet, because he seems genuinely nice. Stiles has never been the type to make friends easily, despite his outgoing manner. He has many acquaintances, yes, but they’re not people he wants to spend his precious free time on. With the sudden and strange onset of melancholy and ire with the world in general, he could really use a friend.

 

There are actually quite a few workshoppers to go around, which means being shuffled into a new department isn’t actually necessary for all of them. It seems clear to Stiles, that he’s on the fast track towards ER. Awesome. They’ll be here for a little over a week, of course he’s one of the unlucky ones. While he already suspected this more or less from the start, it’s confirmed by his spanking new collegue.

“Neurology is harsh”, Liv confides. “We get all the faulty bodily functions. If you can though it out here, you can do a bit of blood.”

One of those ‘faulty bodily functions’ greets him right away, in form of a cute little girl who waves at him and then promptly vomits onto his trainers.

“Yeaaah”, Liv drawls, “you get used to it.”

 

If one ever gets used to it, Stiles suspects it’ll take longer than the three days he’ll get.

In fact, when somebody significantly older and decidedly less sweet pukes all over his shirt two short hours later, he thinks he might be one of those who’ll never get used to it.

“Jeez, sorry. That one kinda snuck up on me.”

The girl whips her hair back with a practiced flip. “Tough luck.”

“Sweetheart”, he drawls, “pretty girls can usually puke all they want on me, but on a regular night they at least put out first.”

She snorts and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Erica. And if you can smuggle me a steak I can make you see stars, _sweetheart_.”

“Let me get out of these puke-pants first.”

 

It’s with a mix of glee and apprehension, that he finds out he’ll be replacing Luis as Erica’s babysitter for most of his time. Sadly, there seem to be no stars in his immediate future, because Erica’s actual dinner does not include steak.

 “She’s on a ketogenic diet”, Liv whispers and passes Stiles a tray of soggy greens. “Absolutely no steak. And no carbohydrates either.”

Of course he’s going to be the bearer of bad dinner news. Peas and broccoli roll unappealingly all over the small plate, covered in a boring looking white sauce. He sniffs it. It smells vaguely like pepper and hospital.

“Sorry, Erica, no steak today either”, he greets. Erica is lying face down on her bed. She’s already in her pyjamas; hot pink with skulls on it. She makes a mewling noise halfway between disappointment and amusement.

“Did you try? Please tell me you tried to get me a steak.”

The soggy greens vanish only slowly, but Stiles has strict instructions to make sure she eats.

“This sucks. Even more than my mom’s food. And it’s basically the same stuff, how do they do that?” She lets peas drop from her spoon with an exasperated expression. They make an unattractive _splat_. Small drops of pea juice spray onto Stiles’ ugly mustard vest.

She pushes the tray away; there’s still at least two spoonful left.

“Listen, you don’t actually have to sit here until I’m done. I’m not some poor little girl that has to be babysat. I’ve already told Luis: I’ve got epilepsy, I’ll survive.”

“Good thing then”, he says, pushing the tray back towards her, “that I’m not pitying you. I’m just ... conscientious.”

She glares at him, but shovels another spoon of food into her mouth. Her cheeks bulge like a hamster’s.

“Yes, very mature, Erica.”

 

Erica is a constant fixture in neurology. The ketogenic diet only works most of the time, and when she isn’t being shuffled around to run tests, she’s lying like dead in a hospital bed.

She’s always grinning like a Cheshire cat though, and he really doesn’t see how she does it.

At the end of his third day she promises _not_ to visit him in the ER.

“I haven’t had a grand mal since I was sixteen. Next time we meet you’ll be back in post anaesthesia and not morally obliged to make me follow my damn diet.”

“Compromise: you’ll stick to your diet and I’ll sneak you a ketogenic low-carb cupcake. I know a bakery uptown.”

They shake on it.

 

On the way to the ER he crosses paths with Luis.

Luis is a big, burly man, basically made to heroically carry young maidens into hospitals. He has huge hands and shoulders and eye-catching tattoos all over his arms. If there was someone that Stiles suspected to come out of the ER unfazed, it would be him, because he looks like he might have removed a number of bullets in his time _with his teeth_.

Now he appears a good twenty centimetres shorter than before with his shoulders hung and his face sweaty and red.

“Dude, you ok?”

Luis shakes his head, as if to rid himself of unwanted thoughts. Instead of answering he grabs Stiles by the shoulders and said “Take this seriously.”

“What the hell happened to you?”

“The Animals came in.”

It takes a while until Stiles gets it. The Animal is a shapeshifter; a hero who is famous for springing surprise attacks on his enemies, rapidly shifting from tiny insects into huge predators.

“You got a hero in there?”

This is kind of cool; he can’t quite keep the hilarity out of his voice. Luis mouth turns down into a fierce scowl.

“I said to take this seriously”, he snaps. “Do you know what can hurt heros? Super villains. Or trains – or planes – crashing into them. This isn’t cool.”

In fact, he looks vaguely green.

“There was ... blood everywhere. They didn’t even let me help much. I – I don’t know what happened to him. It was as if someone ... opened him up like a purse, took everything out and threw it back at him.”

Not cool. So not cool. Stiles’ imagination isn’t something to brag about, but Luis sounds like someone back from war. This isn’t what he volunteered for. What the hell happened to Animal? His hands are getting sweaty. _Mr. Stilinski_ , he hears somewhere far off, _if this goes on, we cannot grant your scholarship_.

_Mr. Stilinski, if you keep being distracted we cannot let you loose on patients._

He shakes it off.

“Ok. Ok, I’ll ... you go back to intensive care, Scott’s a darling. It’ll be like a mini-vacay. I’m sure Animal is fine. He’s a hero, right? Right. He’s fine.”

If he isn’t, Stiles doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want anything to do with this. He’ll give out asthma sprays to kids, and mop up some blood and ice some sprains and then he’ll be out of there too. At least one thing in his life has to go right for him after all.


End file.
